Don't journalists usually wait until someone dies tragically and unexpectedly before writing articles like the one that recently appeared in Slate about Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum? Aeroplane is indeed a beautiful album, but I'd hardly stake it as a work of a rare and mystical genius, despite Mangum's semi-disappearance. It's a well-put-together and gorgeous album by a talented singer and songwriter, and I hope Mangum's intriguing personal life doesn't distract from the record, the same way it has for the likes of Kurt Cobain and Nick Drake.The fact that for the tenth anniversary of this landmark album we get to read about the singer instead of the music seems to indicate otherwise though.
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And as a timely example of the artist as a distraction we've got Bon Iver. He went to a cabin and wrote an album! In the woods! By himself!
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